Full bpmNEXT program here. The format is 30 minutes per speaker: 20 minutes of demo, 10 minutes of Q&A.
Day 2, first session: data-driven processes and analytics
Visual Analytics and Smart Tools, Robert Shapiro, Process Analytica
Optima is their product for performing statistical analysis and optimizing process models, with four quadrants providing visibility into Model, Simulate, Analyze and Optimize toolkits, which act on a shared model. Model provides standard BPMN modeling including setting advanced attributes on elements. Simulation attributes are set in Simulate, then Optimize is used to define the parameters for optimization, e.g., cycle time, number of resources, cost. Analyze shows different representations of simulated runtime information, including histograms and scatterplots to allow identification of outliers, and a Gantt chart for critical path calculation. Can filter the data set based on the analytics, e.g., show only the process instances represented by a cluster on the scatterplot of cycle times. Remote demo via Skype, which made the communication a bit stilted.
Goals in the Process Continuum: from BPM to ACM and Beyond, Dominic Greenwood, Whitestein Technologies
Their target is to allow process automation across the continuum from unstructured to structured processes, for which they propose executable goal-oriented BPMN. They see rules-driven processes as being reactive, and goal-based processes having the potential to be proactive: assessing what to do next based on current and target future states, and selecting best actions to achieve a specific goal. They have a taxonomy of process goals: milestone goals (aligning intent with action, representing something to be achieved) and governance goals (obtaining/maintaining a specific target, representing something to be maintained), plus a layered process scoping to provide both tactical (single instance) governance and strategic (multiple/aggregate instance) governance. Demo of Eclipse-based design environment showing hierarchy of goals and activities: activities are the leaf nodes for achieving a specific atomic goal, and can be expanded into a full BPMN model. Individual processes are essentially functions that are called to achieve the goals, not the top-level artifact; the goals are constantly being evaluated to see how best to satisfy them, then uses a goal-seeking controller to instantiate and control the processes as required. Planning for a GO-BPMN extension.
KPI Risk Assessment, Manoj Das, Oracle
Demonstration of unreleased analytics capabilities for Oracle BPM. BAM Composer is a web tool targeted at business analysts, allowing creation of Dashboard, KPI, Query, Alert, View or Data Object. A dashboard is a standard BAM-style dashboard including process data and external data sources, with graphical visualizations, made up of the other elements. KPIs can be realtime (constantly calculated) or scheduled (periodically calculated), and are defined by the measurement of a specific data object, optionally over a rolling window; a threshold, with high/medium/low deviation ranges and actions to be triggers when thresholds are reached; and additional optional risk indicators such as other data values that may make this KPI particularly critical. Queries are a measurement of a specific data object to show trending changes, also allowing rules and actions to be triggered. Their event processing is focused on meaningful business patterns, including trends, moving averages and missing events.
Operational Process Intelligence for Real-Time Business Process Visibility, Patrick Schmidt, SAP
Intelligence business operations powered by HANA: in-memory big data analytics for real-time informational context to support decision-making in processes. Demonstration of a business dashboard showing internal data from multiple systems (BPM, Business Suite, databases, etc.), plus Twitter feeds and other external data sources. Interactively drill into or filter by problem areas highlighted by graphical representations to see underlying processes and data, including drilling into specific process instances. KPIs for processes updated and displayed in realtime. In the NetWeaver BPM design environment, a phase view (higher level sequential process view, similar to a value chain) can be created where process phases are a collection of the activities in an existing process model; the phase view is also available in the runtime business dashboard with the aggregate runtime statistics for the process activities contained in each phase. NW BPM can now use HANA directly as its database so that the history logs don’t need to be exported and imported before the analytics can be generated.
Mid-morning break, time to check out of my room and get back here for the next session.